Birthday Breakdown: Top 10 Songs Sung By Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks

Wild-hearted, beautiful singer-songwriter, [lastfm link_type=”artist_info”]Stevie Nicks[/lastfm], turns 63-years-old today. One of our favorite female vocalists and a style icon with her flowy, gypsy garb, Nicks still evokes the same ethereal energy she did when she was just an experience hungry young singer in [lastfm link_type=”artist_info”]Fleetwood Mac[/lastfm].

To celebrate Nicks’ birthday, we’ve curated our Top Ten Songs Sung By Stevie Nicks from both her extensive solo career and time with Fleetwood Mac.

10. “Gypsy”

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“Gypsy” could be considered a pre-Fleetwood Mac autobiographical tune for Nicks; she wrote the song about her life before Fleetwood Mac and her gypsy life sleeping on small mattresses with Lindsay Buckingham “on the floor.”

She also name checks a San Francisco clothing store called the Velvet Underground.

9. “Sara”

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Off the Tusk album, “Sara” is a song Nicks wrote for bandmate Mick Fleetwood’s wife, Sara Record Fleetwood. Nicks had an affair with Mick Fleetwood, Sara fell in love with him although she was married to music manager Jim Recor, and then also had an affair with Mick. Later on, the two got married.

8. “Angel”

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Another song from the Tusk album, “Angel” tells a similar mythological story was “Rhiannon,” although Nicks wasn’t aware of it at the time.

7. “Gold Dust Woman”

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From Fleetwood Mac’s most infamous album, Rumors, “Gold Dust Woman” has no decided meaning for the singer, although there are some references to the goddess Morrigan and allusions to Nicks’ then-rampant cocaine use.

6. “Dreams”

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Written by Stevie Nicks for Rumors, “Dreams” was Mac’s only number one United States hit. The whole Rumors album was written about the emotional upheaval caused in the band by the emotional and sexual relationships going on between band members.

Nicks wrote “Dreams” in a moment of clarity to describe the tangled web of what was going on.

5. “Stand Back”

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From her second solo album, The Wild Heart, “Stand Back” was a hugely successful single in 1983. Apparently, Prince helped her add the synthesizer parts to the song after she called him to tell him her song idea.

4. “Edge of Seventeen”

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“Edge of Seventeen” was the third single off Nicks’ debut solo album Bella Donna. The song was written to express her grief over both her uncle’s death and the murder of John Lennon.

3. “Landslide”

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Nicks’ highly emotional singing in “Landslide” made it one of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular songs of their self-titled album of the same name. Still quite young, Nicks was going through an existential phase where she was contemplating going back to school and leaving music.

2. “Rhiannon”

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Based on a book Nicks read called Triad by Mary Leader, “Rhiannon” wasn’t intentionally based on the Welsh goddess, but Nicks found out later that the lyrics were highly applicable to the mythological story.

1. “Wild Heart” (backstage)

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A song from Nicks’ second solo album of the same title, we love this intimately documented moment of Nicks doing an acapella version of her song “Wild Heart” while she is getting her make-up done.

With the fan blowing her, Nicks just glows. You can see how transcendent her spirit is–even without the help of stage lights and costumes.